Soon after BSP supremo Mayawati announced the break-up of the ‘grand alliance’ between her party and SP and RLD, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said that his party will contest alone on all 11 seats where by-elections will be held.
“If the coalition has broken, I will reflect deeply on it and if the coalition isn’t there in the by-elections, then Samajwadi Party will prepare for the elections. SP will also fight on all 11 seats alone,” Yadav told reporters in Ghazipur, on Tuesday, after Mayawati broke the alliance.
Earlier on Tuesday, the BSP chief announced that her party will contest the Assembly by-elections in Uttar Pradesh on its own.
But she added that the break-up with the SP “is not a permanent break”.
“It’s not a permanent break. If we feel in future that SP chief succeeds in his political work, we’ll again work together. But if he doesn’t succeed, it’ll be good for us to work separately. So we’ve decided to fight the by-elections alone,” she said at a press conference in Lucknow.
Mayawati said that the reason behind the break-up is that Yadav voters had not supported the alliance.
“However, we can’t ignore political compulsions. In the results of Lok Sabha elections in UP, base vote of Samajwadi Party, the ‘Yadav’ community, didn’t support the party. Even strong contenders of SP were defeated,” Mayawati said.
“If Yadavs had voted in full measure for the alliance, senior SP leaders like Dimple Yadav, Dharmendra Yadav and Akshay Yadav would not have lost from Yadav-dominated seats. This is a matter for concern for the Samajwadi Party,” she pointed out.
Mayawati, however, underlined that the SP chief and his wife Dimple Yadav have given her a lot of respect.
“SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and his wife Dimple Yadav have given me a lot of respect. I also forgot all our differences in the interest of the nation and gave them respect. Our relation isn’t only for politics, it’ll continue forever,” she said.
Mayawati had, on Monday, held a closed-door review meeting with party leaders in Delhi.
The former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister reportedly said that the BSP had not benefited from the alliance with Akhilesh Yadav-led SP in the Lok Sabha elections.
BSP contested the Lok Sabha elections in an alliance with the SP and RLD. The alliance won a total of 15 seats, with the BSP winning 10 of the 38 it contested and SP winning five of the 37 it contested. RLD failed to win any of the three seats it contested.
Eleven Assembly seats were vacated because the sitting legislators were elected to the Lok Sabha. Of the 11, nine are from the BJP while one each is from the BSP and SP.